Creation of a compound document is known using a word processor program. Modern word processor programs allow importing contents from different types of sources like text files, image files, web pages etc to create a compound document. It is also possible to reflect the changes in the imported document when the original document is changed. This method of creating compound documents is manual and involves only plain inclusion of the corresponding sub documents to create the compound document. There is no way to dynamically compose documents, verify the contents and transform the documents to different formats.
The Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), a language used to create web pages, provides a construct to specify links to other sources of information in a document. The HTML hyperlink element provides the location of a file or other resource and can be used to refer to other documents from a HTML document. A uniform resource locator (URL), in the hyperlink element specifies the resource type and additional information about the resource being accessed. The resource type specifies a particular resource such as file, hypertext page, news server, file server etc. Each resource type is associated with a specific server type. The web server processes a URL, accesses the resources specified in it and provides the required information to the client. This method allows specification of multiple sources of information for creating a web page. However, this source information is specified as a link only and the user has to select the link to view information from different sources. Also, there is no way to verify if the different contents are in correct format and to transform the documents to different format.
There exist compound document models and frameworks like Document Object Model of World Wide Web consortium, and Object Linking and Embedding (Microsoft). These frameworks allow composition and manipulation of compound documents from different data sources and applications. However, these frameworks do not provide a single consistent model that allows for specifying the components of the document, verifying if the contents are in correct format and for transforming the compound document to required formats.